TALLAHASSEE — Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has filed a lawsuit against Roblox Corporation, accusing the popular online gaming platform of deceiving parents about the safety of its service while failing to protect children from exposure to graphic content and contact with sexual predators.
The lawsuit is one of several nationwide lawsuits that have been filed in recent months against video game platforms for safety issues.
Uthmeier
The complaint, filed in the Eighth Judicial Circuit in Baker County, alleges that Roblox has “knowingly facilitated” abuse and misled families by marketing its platform as safe and child-friendly despite systemic safety failures.
Roblox is widely advertised as the world’s safest gaming platform for kids, but it has in reality, become “a hunting ground for sexual predators,” where adults can pose as children and even registered sex offenders can interact with minors, the complaint states.
According to court filings, predators use the platform to find, groom and abuse children, with some Florida children allegedly coerced into taking and sending explicit sexual images and others reported to have been abducted and raped after initial contact through Roblox.
Central to the state’s allegations are shortcomings in the platform’s age verification and parental consent systems.
The complaint asserts Roblox “has long made no effort to verify users’ age or obtain parental consent at signup,” allowing adults to misrepresent themselves as minors and contact children freely. Investigators for the state reportedly created accounts purporting to be young children and were immediately able to access thousands of games, some with adult or violent themes, without parental approval.
The lawsuit cites a range of harmful content allegedly accessible to children, including games that reenact real-life crimes against children, such as recreations of infamous “freak-off” parties or experiences themed around the private island of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The complaint alleges that these hypersexualized environments and lax safety controls are predictable outcomes of Roblox’s design and moderation practices.
In announcing the lawsuit, Uthmeier also shared a statement on the social media platform X, saying Roblox was “hiding behind press releases and superficial safety measures while predators are openly grooming and targeting children on its platform.”
He noted that while a criminal investigation is ongoing, the civil suit is intended to hold the company accountable for what his office views as serious failures to protect young users.
The complaint invokes Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, seeking injunctive relief, consumer restitution, civil penalties and other equitable remedies.
The attorney general’s office argues that Roblox’s conduct not only harmed children but also misrepresented the nature of the platform in marketing and communications to parents and users.
While the lawsuit focuses on civil claims, it comes against the backdrop of a broader enforcement effort by Uthmeier’s office.
In October, the attorney general issued criminal subpoenas seeking internal data from Roblox related to age verification protocols, moderation policies, abuse reports and marketing practices and prohibiting the company from deleting relevant records.
Those subpoenas are part of an ongoing criminal investigation into whether the platform’s features and policies have aided predators in gaining access to minors.
Roblox has not been quoted in the court filings included in the lawsuit, but in prior responses to public scrutiny, the company has said it employs safeguards to monitor content and communications and has been rolling out additional tools to further limit unsafe interactions.
According to reports on the lawsuit, Roblox’s leadership has maintained that safety is a core priority and that the company continues to enhance its moderation and age-verification systems, including the deployment of artificial intelligence-based age estimation technologies.
